1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to air sampling of biological compounds. Specifically, the present invention relates to a composition, device, and method for sampling the ambient air for detecting microbial propagules, microbial propagules being any spore, vegetative cell, or virion of microbiological origin including all bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoans, molds, slime molds, chlamydospores, hyphae, and cysts. In particular, the present invention discloses a biological compound that can be used for collecting mold spores that allows for the increase of detection accuracy. By using this invention, mold spores can be detected with heretofore unprecedented qualitative and quantitative accuracy when submitted to a biological laboratory for subsequent analysis.
2. Description of the Related Art
At the present, all air sampling for detecting microbial propagules require extensive sample preparation for capturing a sample, carefully preserving the sample, and subsequently submitting this sample to a biological testing laboratory for later analysis. Further, current capture media are not well suited for the identification of microbial propagules. This is because current adhesive technologies are incompatible with the molecular techniques most suited for identification, for example, DNA. The most important of these properties include the capture and stabilization of cells in situ for molecular manipulation using a wide variety of genetic and protein techniques. Thus, present detection of microbial propagules cannot easily be accomplished with both speed and accuracy. There is therefore a great need in the art for the capture of mold spores from air samples with the subsequent accurate determination, identification, and quantification of the microbial propagules.
Accordingly, there is now, provided with this invention, an improved method and device effectively overcoming the aforementioned difficulties and longstanding problems inherent in current capture matrices. These problems have been solved in a simple, convenient, and highly effective way by which to create a medium for the accurate collection, identification, and quantification of microbial propagules from an on-site air analysis.
The current invention combines purified water, a synthetic polymer and connective tissue proteins. The combination of which comprise a biomixture with novel properties; properties that allow for adhesion and manipulation of microbial propagules. The properties of the biomixture provide advantages not available with current adhesive technology. Compatibility with molecular techniques provides the present biomixture invention with the advantage of precision DNA diagnostics including PCR, QPCR, and MSQPCR. DNA diagnostics are extremely sensitive in their ability to detect and quantify microbial species including identification of pathogenic microbial strains or chimeric mutants. However, the biomixture's properties provide scientist with a tool that goes beyond identification purposes. These include manipulation of cells stabilized in the biomixture. Since connective tissue proteins bind to surface receptors it may be possible to design molecular tools to activate microbial cells or genetically transform cells to produce novel products; a valuable tool for the pharmaceutical and biofuel industries.